Christopher Fowler

Some were really not very good at all.

Bless her, she tried many different types of writing that sometimes bordered on experimental.

She would include a supernatural element in a crime novel, so readers would turn around and say, you can't do that, that's cheating.

And then she'd go, don't worry, there's another book coming.

And so she would try different things.

So reliability, on a publisher's point of view, is something very desirable in an author.

So those ones rise to the top.

And also the ones who jump around between genres.

I myself jump between genres to the point where I give my publicist a terrible headache.

And that's another thing, you know, if you stay in one area and mine it, it's very important.

Conan Doyle wrote, what, 66 stories, something like that?

But the Dr. Thorndike books by R. Austin Freeman

There are many more of those, and he's a contemporary of Conan Doyle.

Now, why do we remember Conan Doyle and not Freeman?

Well, that's a pretty strange one to explain.

I think the Conan Doyle ones are easier.

I think they're all the same length stories.

They're easier to pick up and put down.

The R. Austin Freemans, they're longer, they're more complex.

But now, interesting, they're back in fashion, and they're being published again.